Choose Your Own Adventure

Wednesday, February 25

At Soundlab, we are always trying to figure out how to most effectively get the word out about shows. What are your thoughts on flyers/posters? Do you read them? Do well-designed flyers ever make you want to hit a show you wouldn't have attended otherwise? or are bad ass posters like these a thing of the past?

Tuesday, February 24

Soon after he first emerged in the mid-'50s, pianist Cecil Taylor was the most advanced improviser in jazz; five decades later he is still the most radical. Although in his early days he used some standards as vehicles for improvisation, since the early '60s Taylor has stuck exclusively to originals. To simplify describing his style, one could say that Taylor's intense atonal percussive approach involves playing the piano as if it were a set of drums. He generally emphasizes dense clusters of sound played with remarkable technique and endurance, often during marathon performances. Suffice it to say that Cecil Taylor's music is not for everyone.

Saturday, February 14

On 5/16/06 and again on 5/2/07, Japanese psychedelic experimentalists Acid Mothers Temple landed at Soundlab for two mind-blowing shows. As it happens, both were recorded from the audience, the results of which have been archived for free download here and here.

Friday, February 13

Hard Rock and Heavy Metal have always evoked ironic fondness among both street level hipsters and academic post-modernists, but in the early '00s a much more sincere interest in '70s stoner rock and over the top '80s Metal grandiosity became apparent among audiences otherwise interested in styles more easily defined as "experimental." For me, this disconcerting development made programming the newest music paradoxical: to move forward, we had to regurgitate the very music that Soundlab was birthed to transcend. Sunn O)))), with its nods to stoner metal and drone minimalism, made it possible to connect the dots, and groups like Rhys Chatham's Essentialist, which reconfigured the No Wave Minimalist's guitar symphonies in the context of the new drone metal made the exercise academic.

Still, I must admit I never fully understood the sonic connections, outside of ironic appropriation of the genre, and even though the sheer power of the above mentioned groups at Soundlab was impressive, I couldn't shake the sense that I was hearing the music that gave me reason to leave the soundtrack of my youth behind.

The following article, from a previously unpublished essay commissioned for The Wire's online 300th issue celebrations, doesn't do much to help me understand why I should care, although it does trace a subterranean history of Metal as it parallels the experimental magazine's own gradual embrace of it:

When The Wire published its first issue in 1982, it is doubtful that founders Anthony Wood and Chrissie Murray foresaw a future in which Heavy Metal – then derided in 'serious' music circles as an emotionally retarded, mongrel form of popular music – would share space in its pages alongside jazz, free improvisation and contemporary composition. After all, this was some time before the genre would begin its association with the 'avant' tag, and any dalliances with electronica, Ambient or musique concrète, though they certainly did take place, were not recognised as such by the post-punk firebrands of the music press.

Wednesday, February 11

1: Maintain a Daily Ritual. Music is like breathing, eating, walking, sleeping, drinking, pissing, and, with any luck, fucking. One must have something to play, create, and examine everyday; there are simply no vacations. Music must be a physical need and a mental compulsion in each moment of existence.

2: Live Aesthetic Immersion. One's aesthetic inclinations regarding sound should bleed over into and flow from all artistic disciplines as easily as they do from daily experience. There is no reason a sonic composition cannot be inspired by or contribute to a drawing, a tasty curry, or one's choice of socks.

3. When in Doubt, Bum Them Out. If you can't convert 'em, make 'em run crying and holding their ears. There is no shame in being a bummer. To elicit a reaction - positive or negative - is a valueless proposition and a noble pursuit in its own right.

4. Get in the Van. This is self-explanatory. Read the book, live the life.

5. Seek Strength Through Strength. Gear's gotta be carried, sleep must be forsaken, and long tours have to be survived, knowing all the while that ideas flow best when one has the stamina to let them out. Through proper consumption of wholesome fresh foods, daily strength training and sports, and copious amounts of fresh air, one can foster personal fortitude and allow room for creativity to flower.

6. Join the Family. AIDS Wolf is a nuclear family, from which flows an ever-expanding extended family network. Artistic collaborations, shared travels, exchanged stories, and general camaraderie with other bands and artists are not only motivating and inspiring but also serve as a vital metrics by which to measure one's own perceived worth.

7. Allow for Sonic Fields of Nothing. The use of negative space in music and design creates new dynamics, abstracts the obvious, and challenges both the creator and the audience.

8. Lift Anchor and Set Sail. De-anchoring compositions by dispensing with a bass guitar allows AIDS Wolf to make rhythm, often muddled, confused, and obscured with polyrhythmicality, the central feature of its performances. Lacking a "mama heartbeat", in this way, pushes the band out of predictability and puts atonality on a pedestal.

9. Become the Weird Punks. Remember when punk was weird and when weird was punk Destroy genre straight jackets and move out of the comfortable. Confrontation with norms and expectations is where the AIDS Wolf family is most at home.

Now that you have studied and committed the 9 Principles of AIDS Wolf to memory, you are ready to carry them into your daily life. Find failure and misery as you are guided by these tenets and bring them with you into the wider world.

Tuesday, February 10

In anticipation of Greg Ginn's forthcoming appearance in Buffalo (at Mohawk Place on March 19), take a look at this hilarious timeline of hairstyles worn by Ginn and his bandmates in the pioneering hardcore outfit Black Flag from 1976 to 1986. Fun stuff.

Monday, February 9

"Here’s a list of 10 great experimental rock bands from Japan [including Soundlab veterans Mono and World's End Girlfriend], in no particular order. Whilst all can be classified under the ‘experimental’ umbrella, most play post-rock or math rock to varying degrees" (from Sparkplugged.net).

Sunday, February 8

Drag City, the venerable label responsible for issuing records by Pavement, Stereolab, Bert Jansch, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Joanna Newsom, and Neil Hamburger (just to name a few) is reissuing Buffalo punk legends The Fems' classic Go To A Party 7".

From the label:

"OK, we can all agree that reissue LPs are among the coolest things going in the music bizness today, right? Well, wait til you get ahold of the latest trend, reissue 7” records! We’re getting the party started by resurrecting the fantastic sound of The Fems. To do so, we had to travel back to the year 1982, when this single was pressed in some insignificant amount by the band and spread around the country, one copy at a time. The Fems represented early American hardcore punk at a time when speed wasn’t necessary in order to punk out and the intersection of angst and humor was a common crossroads for aspirant songwriters. Hence, the barbed humor of “Go To A Party” and “Is It Living?” alongside the primal screaming of “Order.” The Fems were a legend in their hometown of Buffalo, presiding over energy-charged crowds with loads of sarcastic banter and making themselves a party favorite in the wide-open early 80s. Their 7”EP “Go To A Party” was recorded with the vocals, drums and bass closest to the mic and the guitar somewhere in the next room – but the low, rumbling sound that resulted is a unique vision from early punk days. For frustrated collectors, it’s a must-have – but not too many copies have been pressed, as part of our effort to duplicate the original release in every way. Make us sorry, punker! If you’re in Buffalo around Christmas you can catch The Fems’ annual reunion show — but if not, this is your chance at a rare slice of punk rock greatness come back from the grave!"

Saturday, February 7

"no longer just swept along" consists of installed visual works including paintings, wall drawing and sculpture in addition to media content of audio and video elements. Through the combination of these artistic medias, no longer just swept along encompasses the shifting immense cycles of nature that surrounds us such as growth and decay, the weather and the seasons, showing the significance these forces play in our lives. The exhibition will open to the public with a reception with the artist on Saturday, March 7, 2009 from 8:00 to 11:00 pm. Big Orbit Gallery is located at 30 Essex Street in Buffalo.

David Andree, a Minneapolis, Minnesota native pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in the Visual Studies Department at SUNY Buffalo, displays the unique artistic ability to combining drawing, sculpture, audio and video work into cohesive visual and conceptual statements. no longer just swept along has originated from what David writes is his “desire to investigate the same idea, of locating the self within the ever-changing systems of nature that surround us through multiple sensory experiences.” … “Creating these works has become a struggle to make implicit the temporary nature of existence – a state of constant change and decay, a world which forces continue independently from the will of any individual part.”

Toronto's burgeoning experimental music scene was featured in the December 2008 issue of The Wire: Adventures in Modern Music's monthly "Global Ear" column. Unfortunately, the article isn't available online, although here is a selection of accompanying tracks by the likes of Canaille, Joda Clement, Element Choir, Feuermusik, Darren Copeland, Barry Prophet, Tim Hecker and interestingly, Buffalo's Baczkowski/ Padmanabha Duo.

Friday, February 6

"My name is Megan, and I have an unhealthy relationship with black metal," reads the profile of the blogger and baker behind The Black Oven, dedicated to disseminating recipes for "Immaculate confections succumbed to northern darkness." Check out her recipes for Ornaments of Cinammon, Scones of Might, and Traditional Cupcakes Inspired by Untraditional Black Metal here.

Few bands occupied as much space on the CD shelves of millennium-era art students as Chicago's Tortoise and Glascow's Mogwai. Focusing exclusively on instrumentals, Tortoise was among the first indie rock bands to incorporate styles closer to Krautrock, Dub, Minimalism, Electronica and Jazz rather than the standard rock and roll and punk that dominated for years, and to employ instrumentation (two bass guitars, three percussionists switching between drums, vibraphones and marimbas) that departed from the traditional rock set up. For this reason, they are often cited as one of the central pillars of "post-rock" movement. The group's only other Buffalo appearance was in the room above Mr Goodbar in the mid-90s.

Where Tortoise injected dub and jazz influences to the post-rock mix, Glasgow's Mogwai pushed elements associated with traditional rock beyond the limits of conventional expectations. Most often, the group composed instrumental, often lengthy guitar-based pieces typically focused around the elaboration of a single theme. They are known for the use of dynamic contrast, melodic bass guitar riffs, guitar distortion and effects. The group's only other appearance in Buffalo was as part of an outdoor festival associated with a Clarence nightclub a few years back.

Stanford Magazine reports on the applications from psychological research Carol Dweck's work, which uses careful experiments to determine why some people give up when confronted with failure, while others roll up their sleeves and dive in.

Through a series of exercises, the experimenters trained half the students to chalk up their errors to insufficient effort, and encouraged them to keep going. Those children learned to persist in the face of failure—and to succeed. The control group showed no improvement at all, continuing to fall apart quickly and to recover slowly. These findings, says Dweck, “really supported the idea that the attributions were a key ingredient driving the helpless and mastery-oriented patterns.” Her 1975 article on the topic has become one of the most widely cited in contemporary psychology.

Attribution theory, concerned with people’s judgments about the causes of events and behavior, already was an active area of psychological research. But the focus at the time was on how we make attributions, explains Stanford psychology professor Lee Ross, who coined the term “fundamental attribution error” for our tendency to explain other people’s actions by their character traits, overlooking the power of circumstances. Dweck, he says, helped “shift the emphasis from attributional errors and biases to the consequences of attributions—why it matters what attributions people make.” Dweck had put attribution theory to practical use...

...[S]ome of the children who put forth lots of effort didn’t make attributions at all. These children didn’t think they were failing. Diener puts it this way: “Failure is information—we label it failure, but it’s more like, ‘This didn’t work, I’m a problem solver, and I’ll try something else.’” During one unforgettable moment, one boy—something of a poster child for the mastery-oriented type—faced his first stumper by pulling up his chair, rubbing his hands together, smacking his lips and announcing, “I love a challenge.”

Such zest for challenge helped explain why other capable students thought they lacked ability just because they’d hit a setback. Common sense suggests that ability inspires self-confidence. And it does for a while—so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything. Dweck realized—and, with colleague Elaine Elliott soon demonstrated—that the difference lay in the kids’ goals. “The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something,” Dweck says, and “learning goals” inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviors than “performance goals.”

Thursday, February 5

A key figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City for over thirty years, Elliot Sharp has released over sixty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock, and techno music. He pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction, as well as the use of computers in live improvisation with his Virtual Stance project of the 1980s (from Wikipedia). Significantly, he received his M.A. in 1977 from UB, where he studied composition with Morton Feldman and Lejaren Hiller, and ethnomusicology with Charles Keil. In this 1995 interview with Brian Duguid, Sharp relays an interesting antecdote about his UB days studying under Feldman:

My encounters with Feldman remain perversely inspirational. I liked much of Feldman's music and enjoyed texts of his that I had come upon. At the University of Buffalo, he was the philosophical emperor of the music department. I took part in the Composer's Forum which held discussions (or rather Feldman held court and we listened) and presented our music. My first concert used a 90-second through-composed soprano sax melody played through a ring-modulator to tape, slowed down to half-speed, with a now 180-second melody, ring-modulated, over-dubbed. This tape was played back at half-speed again yielding a 360-second background over which I improvised again on soprano. Feldman called me into his office the next morning. In his thick Brooklyn accent with 2 inches of cigarette ash ready to anoint me, he pronounced 'Improvisation, I don't buy it!' and dismissed me.

"At our next Composers Forum event in March 1975 I presented my Attica Brothers piece based upon the eponymous prison uprising (I was involved in some support groups and activities around this). The piece used a microtonal melody (for maximum buzz and difference tones) for electrified string quartet plus conga drums, rock drums (the beginning of my association with Bobby Previte) and orchestral percussion. The parts (written out) were conducted by time-cards. The conga player played a 16th note pulse throughout. As we were about to commence the piece in a packed concert-hall, Feldman stood up and said 'Where's his music-stand?' pointing to the conga drummer. I replied that he didn't need one as he was cued by the conductor to begin and end. Feldman got up on stage, grabbed a music-stand and placed it in front of the conga drummer saying 'Now you can play it.' Again I was called into his office the next morning and told: 'You put too much sociology in your music - music should be listened to sitting in red plush seats and your music is for sitting on the floor!'"

As most of you are aware, the industry of print journalism has faltered recently in the face of declining ad revenue and reader flight to the internet. Most concern is direcated at the fate of daily papers, once bastions of government oversight and journalistic integrity in general; but the changing news landscape also effects smaller alternative newsweeklies and niche publications responsible for providing key support for underground and emerging musics. In the recent past, 2 noteworthy publications concerned specifically with outsider musics have exposed their bruises: first, Arthur magazine, which helped launch free-folk and psych noise into mainstream indie consciousness, ceased publication; more recently, the experimental journal Signal to Noise announced that it was in dire need of financial stimulus, and has launched a fund-raising campaign.

"My thought has always been that we have to earn our readers' interest with superior content, and that I shouldn't go around begging and pleading for reader support," Signal to Noise editor Pete Gershon told the Houston Press. "But hey, NPR does it, and Arthur magazine was just snatched back from the brink of extinction with a fund-raising campaign that netted them over $20 grand (in gifts, not in orders) in just two weeks' time." [According to Wikipedia, Arthur announced in February 2007 that it would be ceasing publication indefinitely. In April 2007, it was announced that the magazine would return as Arthur Vol. II. The magazine resumed publication in September 2007.]

While everybody loves a cause, and these were/are both noteworthy, the real question is whether the print format is relevant as a means for discussing new music anymore. To me, these magazines serve 2 important roles: providing a definitive measuring stick by which to comprehend the value of music that is too often written about frivolously online; while allowing for the exploration of correlated visual elements (in particular, with Arthur) lost in the stylistic homogenization that results from Blogger culture. What is your opinion?

Wednesday, February 4

The Music Tapes is an indie pop/experimental project of Elephant Six member Julian Koster, also of Neutral Milk Hotel, and the earlier Chocolate U.S.A.. Music Tapes releases are characterised by their unusual orchestration (the singing saw and banjo are matched with sounds recorded in Julian's environment, for example the sound of a bouncing ball as percussion), which produces an effect which is part musique concrete, part 1960s pop. The band also includes such musical inventions as the 7-foot-tall metronome, Static the television, the Clapping Hands Machine, and many other creations.

Monday, February 2

Saxophonist David S. Ware is ailing and in need of a kidney donor, reports Steven Joerg who heads Ware's label, Aum Fidelity. Diagnosed with kidney failure in 1999 and on dialysis ever since, Ware has continued to perform and record, with Shakti, a new record featuring a new lineup, out this month. In late December, Ware reported that treatment was no longer working effectively, and that a transplant is his only option. Various friends and family members have offered to help, but have been rejected as donors since they do note share Ware's O blood type. Ware is seeking interested donors who are under 60 years of age and who are in generally good health without diabetes and high blood pressure. The transplant would take place at New Jersey's highly-regarded Robert Wood Johnson Hospital. If you think you can help, get in touch with Joerg at 718 854 2387 or at aum@aumfidelity.com. Ware, of course, is a towering figure of avant-garde jazz, who came to light in the '70s in the bands of Cecil Taylor and Andrew Cyrille, and who led fairly consistent quartet lineups that epitomized modern free jazz throughout the '90s and '00s, landing a major label contract with Columbia at one point but primarily recording for highly-regarded boutique labels like Aum Fidelity, DIW and Thirsty Ear.

Ware performed at The Calumet (at Hallwalls' beheast) during the late '90s with a group that included Susie Ibarra and William Parker.

Sunday, February 1

The experimental pop-and-electronic duo High Places is known for its unique approach to sample-free wizardry. Mary Pearson and Robert Barber formed the group in Brooklyn and are now based in Los Angeles. Here is a clip of the band discussing their music and playing live on Soundcheck, a program produced by wnyc.org 93.9fm, am 820.

Contributors

Followers

Who is Morton Feldman? (And Why Should I Care)?

A towering figure in 20th-century New Music, Morton Feldman radically re-imagined the possibilities of musical form through an approach to sound correlated with abstract painting. In 1973, Feldman became the Edgard Varèse Professor of Music at the University at Buffalo, a title he retained until his death in 1987. Feldman's tenure is emblematic of a renaissance period of progressive creative activity that brought Buffalo's cultural affiliations international acclaim.

What Would Morton Feldman Do? situates its speculations on multiple levels, firstly imagining the artist as an angry young man contemplating his social calendar. But WWMFD also addresses a larger crisis of relevance facing experimental culture in the 21st century. WWMFD builds on the city's radical legacy, but views history as a challenge to the present - what are you going to do NOW? WWMFD imagines its avant-classical hero wandering the crumbling streets in search of the new and the now, not through escapist longings for another era's modernisms but in concert with the cause of action necessitated by absence.

In this regard, WWMFD begins where Basta! Or Too Much! (We Will Always Know Ourselves), an avant-pop zine published locally from 1997-2001, left the page for the "stage." Collecting de facto proposals for civic reinvention utilizing the fractured experiments of Buffalo's postmodernist cultural community as blueprints, Basta! concerned itself not with art dialogue per se, but with changing what it means to grow up in a shrinking city. From these proposals (which tended to embrace rather than resist post-industrial existential crises) emerged a series of large scale multi-media events (Murder the Word) and ultimately, the performance program at Big Orbit Gallery. Big Orbit's "Soundlab" series, for which the venue of the same name was founded, was conceived of as a multi-faceted, continuously evolving "workshop" for the exploration of contemporary post-cultural incentives. Coming full circle, WWMFD hopes to re-contextualize Soundlab's explorations, and to include other relevant local sound and performance activities in its critical orbit.

Morton Feldman

Loading...

"In 1962, 3 seminal actions conspired to change Buffalo's cultural destiny in the 20th Century. The Albright Art Museum added Knox to its name and hundreds of post-war masterworks to its collection; the private University of Buffalo, absorbed into the public SUNY network, flooded its halls with the best and brightest of contemporary artists, writers and musicians; and The Buffalo Philharmonic, seeking a maestro who would infuse its programming with youthful charisma, hired Lukas Foss, a “wunderkind” pianist and composer whose recent embrace of the avant-garde promised a sharp break from his predecessors’ traditional repertories.

"Under Foss’s direction, the Philharmonic quickly gained an international reputation for meeting head-on the challenges of contemporary new music, which typically required classically-trained musicians to explore unconventional techniques such as “preparing” a piano by stuffing its strings with random objects, or manipulating contact microphones to generate electronic feedback.

"Soon the BPO was among the most adventurous major orchestras in the world, boasting multiple world premiers; releasing recordings of compositions by John Cage, Iannis Xenakis and more; performing Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Momente and Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition on TV ; and embracing a rigorous touring schedule that brought them to Carnegie Hall for the first time in its history.

"'Can this be Buffalo?' Life magazine asked on the occasion of 1968’s Second Festival of the Arts Today, a multi-disciplinary celebration of contemporary experimentation that spotlighted the BPO, UB’s arts departments and the Albright-Knox, and featured a staggering array of visiting participants (among the muscians: Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Cage, Henri Pousseur, Xenakis and LaMonte Young). Life continued: 'Buffalo exploded in an avant-garde festival that was bigger and hipper than anything ever held in Paris or New York.'

"National acclaim was not without precedent during this period. Time magazine expressed similar disbelief when covering the first Festival of the Arts in 1965, calling it 'perhaps the most all-encompassing, hip, with-it, avant-garde presentation in the U.S. to date.'"

--Craig Reynolds, from "Could This Be Buffalo? 40 Years of Experimental Music in Buffalo" (Buffalo Spree, May/June 2005)

Loading...

"Those years—1965-1973—were the American High Sixties. The Vietnam War was in overdrive through most of the period; the U.S. economy was fat and bloody; academic imperialism was as popular as the political kind. Among Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s ambitions was to establish major university centers at each end and the middle of the Thomas E. Dewey Thruway (Stony Brook, Albany, Buffalo) as a tiara for the Empire State’s 57-campus university system. SUNY/Buffalo therefore was given virtual carte blanche to pirate professors away from other universities and build buildings for them to teach in. At one dizzy point in its planning, Gordoh Bunshaft’s proposed new campus complex for the school was reported to be the largest single architectural project in the world, after Brasilia. Eighty percent of the populous English department I joined had been hired within the preceding two years, as additions to the original staff, so numerous were our illustrious immigrants from raided faculties, troubled marriages, and more straitlaced life-styles, we came to call ourselves proudly the Ellis Island of Academia. The somewhat shabby older buildings and hastily built new ones, all jam-packed and about to be abandoned, reinforced that image.

"The politically active among our faculty and students had their own ambitions for the place: the Berkeley of the East. They wanted no part of Mr. Gunshaft’s suburban New Jerusalem rising from filled-in marshland north of the city ('All great cultures,' my new colleague Leslie Fiedler remarked, 'are built on marshes'). In some humors, as when our government lied with more than usual egregiousness about its war, they wanted little enough of the old campus, either. They struck and trashed; then the police and National Guard struck and trashed them. Mace and peppergas wafted through the academic groves; the red flag of communism and the black flag of anarchism were literally waved at English Department faculty-student meetings, which—a sight as astonishing to me as those flags—were attended by hundreds, like an Allen Ginsberg poetry reading with harmonium and Tibetan finger-cymbals.

"Altogether a stimulating place to work through those troubled years: Pop Art popping at the Albright-Knox Museum; strange new music from Lukas Foss, Lejaren Hiller, and their electronic colleagues; dope as ubiquitous as martinis at faculty dinner parties; polluted Lake Erie flushing over Niagara Falls ('the toilet bowl of America,' our Ontario friends called it); and, across the Peace Bridge, endless Canada, to which hosts of our young men fled as their counterparts had done in other of our national convulsions, and from which Professor McLuhan expounded the limitations, indeed the obsolescence, of the printed word in our electronic culture."

—John Barth, introduction to "The Literature of Exhaustion," from The Friday Book (1984)

Loading...

"During a period when there was not yet any university which was explicitly devoted to media art, at the same time as making its theoretical analysis a component of the curriculum, Gerald O'Grady founded the Department of Media Study at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1973. The entire spectrum of media art—ranging from photographic images to slide installations, from music to film and video performances, from film to film installations, from videotape to video environments, and from computer graphics to interactive installations—was investigated, made a reality, and taught about in the 1970s and 80s, by the structuralist avant-garde film makers Hollis Frampton, Tony Conrad, and Paul Sharits; the documentary film maker James Blue; and the legendary video artists Steina and Woody Vasulka, as well as Peter Weibel—all of whom have subsequently been canonized. In the course of this process, media's role in society [especially that of television] and their participatory possibilities were recognized and used for artistic, and also partly politically democratic, projects. All Buffalo faculty members were not only practicing artists, but also capable of theoretically accompanying the development of and issues around their media, in lectures, essays, and publications. The Department of Media Study's significance for the media era is therefore comparable to that of other historical art schools such as the Bauhaus, WChUTEMAS in Moscow, and Black Mountain College in North Carolina. The title MindFrames indicates that during this time [the 1970s and 80s] and in this place [Buffalo], a frame of reference for media art was established. During that period, masterpieces were produced—from perceptual issues to machine aesthetics, from word games to mathematical structures—which provided the horizon and set the standards for media discourse's visual codes."

"When Robert Longo and Charles Clough, together with a loose collection of like-minded friends, turned a former ice house into an artist-run alternative space in Buffalo, New York in 1974, they were well aware that similar organizations were springing up all over the United States and Canada. But they could not have known that within ten years, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center would be herladed in the art press as "the birthplace of post-modernism," with a reputation for presenting challenging work by artists, mediamakers, performers, musicians, and writers like Vito Acconci, Kathy Acker, Laurie Anderson, Barbara Bloom, Eric Bogosian, Jonathan Borfsky, Lester Bowie, Glenn Branca, Chris Burden, Yoshiko Chume, Tony Conrad, Robert Creeley, Nancy Dwyer, Karen Finley, Eric Fischl, Philip Glass, Mike Glier, Jack Goldstein, Dan Graham, John Greyson, Group Material, Holly Hughes, Robert Irwin, Isaac Julien, Mike Kelley, Komar & Melamid, Robbie McCauley, Tim Miller, Joseph Nechvatal, Tony Oursler, Rachel Rosenthal, David Salle, Andres Serrano, Paul Sharits, Cindy Sherman, Michael Snow, Sun Ra, David Wojnarowicz, and Michael Zwack (among literally thousands of others), often early in their careers."

"I arrived in Buffalo just shortly after Hallwalls got started and also, an organization that's now gone the way of so many Buffalo institutions, Media Study/Buffalo, and it was an exciting time because of the gush of Rockefeller-inspired state financing for culture. Of course, the idea was that culture money would keep the Left busy and prevent any of that nastiness Rocky had witnessed in the sixties, and it worked to some extent. Now that all of that has been nipped in the bud, it's easier to see that the culture money really didn't sink too deep into the local population. And the result is that nowadays Hallwalls is really bringing in people in big numbers with a somewhat different kind of fare...

"One of the things that Buffalo has preserved, in all of us here, is a feeling of being real, and in fact we call it the City of No Illusions and make a dead cliche out of that by repeating it so often but it's really true. We have everybody here: we've got geniuses and fools, we've got successes and failures––and people who think they are successes but aren't––and we have such a powerful set of ethnic mixes and hatreds that we really stand as a mirror to the country. In the mean-time, we're always bringing outsiders in and discharging ourselves into the rest of the country like some kind of uh, well I don't want to say toxic waste [laughs] . . . like some kind of additive––an additive. And I find Buffalo people everywhere I go! It's astonishing how they wind up in just the right places, whether it's The Kitchen . . . or The Cabaret . . . whether it's a CEO or a uh, comeback musician. And we, in some ways, manage to preserve . . . somehow, this mix that we have is like a preservative that prevents any of us from really going too far in one direction or another. We have aspirations but we don't sacrifice them on the altar of success too much. We run out and make money and have our success but we don't give up our ideals. And so, I guess that this is one of the things that makes Buffalo, for me, a real American laboratory.

"Now I want to turn around and face your question head–on as a media academic: I think Buffalo's demography is one of its great assets. We're full of people who are overqualified, people who will pay attention and who hate their jobs. We may be at each other's throats sometimes––black versus white, suburbs versus urban, adults versus children, the blue versus white collar and so forth but somewhere in all of this, in each part of this, there's a sense of pride and identity which gives me hope that each aspect of the community authorizes its own cultural identity and, sure enough, we can explore all kinds of different directions in music and art and writing and commerce and for that matter, pet shows and tractor-pulls and last but not least, football teams. I'm just bringing all of this up because I think it's fascinating that even the most unusual cultural objects in Buffalo find their own level at some point and the person who lives next door is as likely to be a jewel thief or a symphony oboe player as they are to be an office worker or a street worker."

--Tony Conrad, from "The Basta! Interview" (Basta!, 1998)

Craig,

Your long article on Beckett, Buffalo and Maximillian inspired me to do my first visual piece since late '96. And I'll sell it to you for $8,000 out of my studio or $16,000 from my dealer/gallery in Venice:

Most people think of Venice's heyday as somewhere between the end of the fourteenth and the end of the sixteenth centuries. Between 1600 & 1797 (the fall of the Republic), Venice consisted primarily of pimps, gamblers, whores, politicians, thieves . . . and artists. No glory, just misery. And the artists were visionary liars––if only there existed a Venice such as they portrayed it! Napoleon––and later, the Austrians––justified conquering Venice by emphasizing the low degree of moral fiber consistent with its being a capital-driven society––just as in America the rust-belt stigma justifies ignoring older industrial, commerce-driven cities like Buffalo––or worse, conquering them with corporate "sophistications" like chain stores. The similarities between the 2 cities do not end there: originally, the prestige associated with Venice's heyday stemmed from its strategic––and ultimately accidental––location, which made it an ideal east-west sea-port, very much like Buffalo in its time. Further, peopled with sea-merchants and governed by commerce, with a constant influx of foreigners arriving from east and west, Venice's importance declined when in 1497 Vasco da Gama's newly discovered sea-route to the east (around Africa's Cape of Good Hope) rendered the city obsolete––just as the Welland Canal sealed Buffalo's fate at the apex of its prominence. As Venice had done over three hundred years before, Buffalo soon fell into the hands of artists and thieves. Unfortunately, now Venice is the cultural center of the 3 richest regions in the world; however, as the rest of N. Italty is embracing succession or autonomy, the city of Venice remains firmly to the left, having just re-elected a mayor who is endorsed by all of Italty's major Socialist and Communist parties.

***

This fall working at the Guggenheim I was required to give a presentation to the faculty and other interns on whatever topic I desired. Knowing only that I did not want to follow the paths of my European peers, whose ground-breaking formal analyses of Kandinsky and Cubism nearly drove me to fire a pistol indiscriminately into an unsuspecting crowd, I decided on Fluxus (certainly you know about it, but if not, I tell you, it's more Dada than Dada and is all about destruction of construction, and of art and medium––it was perfect because I was researching the movement when I got Basta!. What you wrote about Buffalo living its own death and the artist's role in confronting the silence associated with this death made perfect sense to me; thus I have named this activity Buffluxus (or Neo-Fluxus, or Neo-Neo-Dada [as Fluxus is the most Dada of Neo-Dada]).

5 Propositions for the New Neo-Dada (Buffluxus)

1. Find a building about to be destroyed (in Buffalo, simply close your eyes and point). Sign your name to it (after all, you are the artist!) moments before it is to crash to the ground.

"It's true, Anyone can be a Dadaist [or do Fluxus], but even preconception is ephemeral. I'm part of a generation of true Dadaists."

2. Sign your name to everyone listed as "terminal" at the E.R.

3. Mom and Dad are better Buffluxusists that you or I.

4. I've said the word "Buffluxus" several times already and now it's beginning to mean something.

5. The Movement is now over.

---Kevin Reynolds, personal letter (published in Basta! 1997)

"Murder the Word (“A Multi-Media Celebration of the Unreal”) [conceived of by Craig Reynolds in collaboration with Michael Bauman and Betsy Frazer, at the suggestion of Jason Pfaff], developed into a series of multi-media events (“An All-Over Hypertextual Environment”) that attempted to actualize Basta!’s proposals for fun and funds. The event soon transcended its initial “benefit” function, providing an annual locus for hundreds of “experimental” and boundary-pushing musicians, DJs, poets, visual, video, sound and performance artists. The basic premise was to create temporary “all-over” audio-visual environments awash in hyper-media information chaos, textural drift and ritual noise—that is, to meet dead on the promise of collapse predicted for the turn of the millennium."--CR

"The Soundlab series at Big Orbit Gallery [overseen by Executive Director Sean Donaher, and directed by CR, at the suggestion of Gallery Associate Leah Rico, in 2001] grew out of the need to unpack the annual avant-garde holiday and spread its contents over the course of a year. In the beginning, the programming was defined by meta-presentation—investigations of the act of presentation--and ultimately, the employment of oblique strategies reminiscent of the larger conceptual structure of Murder the Word. The earliest Soundlab Series events, the first of which was an “all-over ambient noise” environment celebrating the release of what would turn out to be the last issue of Basta!, were homespun and experimental, activating conceptual blueprints whose actual outcomes were largely unforseeable (as opposed to the presentation of “rehearsed” works, or suites of music by touring bands)."--CR

"The first dedicated Soundlab space was established in 2001 [by CR-- featuring programming overseen by SD--in collaboration with Betsy Frazer, and with significant help by Michael Bauman, LR, Aaron Miller, Ben O'Brien, John Long and others] on the first floor of the building where the last Murder the Word was thrown. "Dedicated to the music, media and performance of Big Orbit Gallery," Soundlab "references club culture in order to collapse traditional presentation methods, but challenges the contemporary entertainment status quo through its dedication to unconventional, experimental, genre-elusive and avant-garde work.""--CR

"In 2003, the Soundlab program once again relocated, this time to its current home, in the basement vaults of the historic Dun Building [venue established by CR and SD in collaboration with MB and BF, and with the help of many volunteers]. Reconsidering avant-garde practice in the era of post-millenial spectacle, Soundlab hopes to advance strategies that promote action--artistically, the production of music, media and performance--as essential to authetically engaging absence (the Buffalo dilemma) and the deafening silence of modern media noise. It's also a good place to have fun."--CR